e concurrence of Turkey and Sweden,
Russia is less vulnerable. The assistance of these two powers was
therefore requisite in order to surprise her, to strike her to the heart
in her modern capital, and to turn at a distance, in the rear of its
left, her grand army of the Niemen,--and not merely to precipitate
attacks on a part of her front, in plains where the extent of space
prevented confusion, and left a thousand roads open to the retreat of
that army.

The meanest soldier in our ranks, therefore, expected to hear of the
combined march of the Grand Vizir towards Kief, and of Bernadotte
against Finland. Eight sovereigns were already enlisted under the
banners of Napoleon; but the two who had the greatest interest in the
quarrel were still deaf to his call. It was an idea worthy of the great
emperor to put all the governments and all the religions of Europe in
motion for the accomplishment of his great designs: their triumph would
have been then secured; and if the voice of another Homer had been
wanting to this king of so many kings, the voice of the nineteenth
century, the great century, would have supplied it; and the cry of
astonishment of a whole age, penetrating and piercing through futurity,
would have echoed from generation to generation, to the latest
posterity!

So much glory was not in reserve for us.

Which of us, in the French army, can ever forget his astonishment, in
the midst of the Russian plains, on hearing the news of the fatal
treaties of the Turks and Swedes with Alexander; and how anxiously our
looks were turned towards our right uncovered, towards our left
enfeebled, and upon our retreat menaced? _Then_ we only looked at the
fatal effects of the peace between our allies and our enemy; _now_ we
feel desirous of knowing the causes of it.

The treaties concluded about the end of the last century, had subjected
the weak sultan of the Turks to Russia; the Egyptian expedition had
armed him against us. But ever since Napoleon had assumed the reins of
power, a well-understood common interest, and the intimacy of a
mysterious correspondence, had reconciled Selim with the first consul: a
close connexion was established between these two princes, and they had
exchanged portraits with each other. Selim attempted to effect a great
revolution in the Turkish customs. Napoleon encouraged him, and was
assisting him in introducing the European discipline into the Ottoman
army, when the victory of Jena, the wa